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Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Ethnographic / Colima & Jalisco Pottery Nude Female Figures, Group of 3
Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Colima and Jalisco. A trio of buff-clay female figures from the shaft-tomb cultures of West Mexico, each rendered with frank attention to the nude body. The largest, of Colima type, stands with legs pressed together and short arms flung outward, her genitalia clearly delineated, her face flattened beneath a low fillet cap. The two smaller Jalisco figures are more compact, their hands drawn toward rounded, swelling bellies, a gesture that likely signals pregnancy and the fertility so central to this iconography. Slit eyes, applied ear ornaments, and burnished russet slip animate their forms. Modeled by hand rather than molded, such figures accompanied the dead in deep shaft tombs, where women, ancestors, and the promise of regeneration were given lasting ceramic voice. The shaft-tomb tradition of West Mexico (Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit) produced no monumental architecture but instead buried its dead in deep vertical shafts opening onto lateral chambers, furnished with hollow and solid ceramic figures. Female figures with emphasized sexual characteristics and gestures toward the belly are frequently interpreted as fertility or ancestral imagery, though their precise ritual meaning remains debated. The elongated limbs and abstracted, mask-like faces of the Jalisco examples contrast with the fuller, more naturalistic modeling of Colima work, letting the two regional idioms be read side by side. Item # 203559
Estimate:$300
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorEthnographic
Estimate:
$300
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